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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with onion dressing, thyme, corned pork, and flavored with pepper and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and stuff the pigeons with onion dressing and thyme; do not sew them up.

  2. Fry the corned pork in a pot until it begins to brown and the fat is released.

  3. Place the pigeons around the pork in the pot and add enough hot water to partially cover them.

Stew

  1. Cover tightly and boil for about an hour until the pigeons are tender.

  2. Remove some of the liquid, then add the reserved liquid back to the pot.

  3. Add extra thyme and pepper.

  4. Turn the pigeons until they are nicely browned.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little flour.

  2. Serve the gravy poured over the pigeons, garnished with parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, covered simmering.
Corned pork
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the pot that carries into the gravy.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.
Thyme
Adds herbal aroma that permeates the meat and the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour starch swells and thickens hot liquid only when it is well dispersed, so adding it to a simmering liquid while stirring helps prevent lumps and keeps the gravy smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, pork, pepper, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, pork, pepper, flour, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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